


Yesterday, We Died

by rhythmicroman



Category: Town of Salem (Video Game)
Genre: Arson, Assisted Suicide, Attempted Murder, Bad Jokes, Bad Puns, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Death, F/F, F/M, Fire, Fuck The Gender Binary, Gen, Gender Identity, Gender Roles, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Killing, Language, M/M, Mass Suicide, Mentions of the afterlife, Mercy Killing, Mind Control, Minor Character Death, Multi, Murder, Nonbinary Arsonist, Nonbinary Character, Other, Prostitution, Religion, Self-Harm, Slut Shaming, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide, Suicide Attempt, Swearing, Technically?, Transphobia, Witchcraft, a lot of internalized bullshit, all any mode, arso can be pretty if he wants to, basically just me projecting my fears onto arso, bc fuck you thats why, depends really, maybe smut? idk, me giving the roles actual names, mildly hunger games-esque, not at all related to the irl salem, or any actual lore, the spy's a dick im sorry, the threat of hell is used a lot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-15
Updated: 2017-07-15
Packaged: 2018-12-02 16:48:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11513430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhythmicroman/pseuds/rhythmicroman
Summary: Everything was fine, up until the day their roles were given.Now his hands are covered in gasoline, and he can hear his sister screaming from her room, and his eyes reflect the roaring red and gold of the flames licking his walls.He smiles, drowsily and half-heartedly, before he's being shaken and they're screaming and he can't breathe.He's going to hell for this.





	Yesterday, We Died

**Author's Note:**

> All characters' descriptions/names were based off canon skins used for their role.  
> Story/Chapter titles come from the song "Shattered" by Trading Yesterday.

The day the new Queen first sat on her throne, was the day the game started.

Arso was _normal_ back then – a _normal_ boy, with a _normal_ name. He was twenty-one, if he remembered right, though he didn’t remember much.

His mother brought in the envelopes – handed one to each of them, their names scrawled on the front in shaky lettering, and then opened hers. Arso saw her hand fly to her mouth and her eyes widen – and heard her whisper her pain.

His sister didn’t seem too upset with hers, smoothing back her red hair and licking her lips, a smirk emerging.

He didn’t open his, not until they were all outside. He sat out by the fountain, envelope in his shaky hands, his short, brown hair combed neatly back.

It felt so unnatural, staring down at his name – it felt like it wasn’t _his_. Not _anymore_. He had another name now, and it was written inside.

His fingers itched to open it, but fear stopped him, and he was stuck like a badly-designed statue, fingers hovering over the flap, twitching, eyes watering as he bit his lip.

“Are you okay?”

He jumped, looking up, as another boy raised an eyebrow at him. He looked kind enough, in the charming way. His hair was styled neatly and his clothes were cleaner than anyone Arso had ever seen.

“Absolutely peachy,” he muttered, glancing down. “Absolutely _fucking peachy.”_

He ripped open the envelope.

* * *

 

_Arsonist._

That was his name now, as it had been since that day, but he still hadn’t lived up to it – he pretended to be something different, something useless, as he hugged his knees to his chest and ignored his family’s midnight sneaking. He pretended he was something good, and simple – maybe a doctor, or a sheriff, or-

_No._ He had to accept it.

Many hadn’t – many had broken to tears, just like his mother, and been wheeled away in corpse carts the next morning, rope-burn around their necks. Some had bullet wounds in their skulls, and some had stabbed themselves right though the chest.

Wills and suicide notes and role cards were placed by the fountain the next morning, and he remembered reading his mother’s with pain in his heart. She’d been an arsonist, too – and she asked him, in tiny print, to _please, please keep his sister safe._

His sister didn’t care nearly as much. He supposed she was too young to understand, and instead just straightened her beautiful locks and made up her pretty face and spent her nights doing something ungodly and plain _sinful._

Arso gnawed his lip at the thought of sins, for he was destined to sin one day, too – and his mother would be waiting there for him, at the doors of hell, tears of shame in her big brown eyes.

* * *

 

_He couldn’t take it anymore._

It felt like he couldn’t breathe, his heart was beating too fast, he was going to die, he was going to die, they were going to find out and kill him – he needed to get rid of them.

_Burn them all down._

He remembered where his father kept the gasoline, and took it quickly, along with an old abandoned (probably unusable) gas mask and a matchbox. He sat silently, his dirtiest jacket fastened tightly around his torso, and just breathed.

He was going to hell. _He was going to hell. **He was going to hell.**_

He started with his sister – he poured gasoline into her smooth, red hair, and dumped it over her bed, and sat stroking her cheek until she awoke, and looked at him with tired blue eyes.

She muttered his old, abandoned name, and he smiled sadly, eyes glistening with tears.

“I’m sorry.” He said softly, and fear widened her sapphire pools – and then she was on fire, and she was screaming, and he was covering her mouth with his thick, gloved fingers.

“I’m so, _so_ sorry, Jessica.” he whispered, before standing and retreating to his own room, ripping off his soot-stained jacket and sobbing as quietly as he could.

* * *

 

When he woke up, the neighbour was shaking him, panic in his voice.

His neighbour was a plain man, with a plain name – something like John – and a forgettable face. He usually spoke with a draining, monotonous, completely personality-lacking voice and barely emoted at all, but now his voice was loud with fear, and his grey eyes wide.

“Come _on,_ kid!” he yelled, and Arso only just noticed the smoke, and that John had his hand on the hem of his shirt, holding it up to his nose. “Do you _want_ to burn to death?!”

He shook his head numbly, and rose to his feet, and drowsily followed John. It couldn’t have been real, right? This was some freak accident. He _didn’t_ do this.

He turned and looked, and Jessica’s door was black and burning, and his fingers itched to stroke the flame.

He cursed himself under his breath and looked to the ground, eyes welling up.

He was _definitely_ going to hell.

* * *

 

“Serves her right,” a man muttered, licking his lips around his cigarette, “stupid whore.”

Arso didn’t flinch – he’d learnt by then that reacting meant questions, and questions weren’t nice. Like, “where were you the night of Jessica’s murder?” – _I don’t know, idiot, maybe asleep, like every-fucker-else._

The town was gathered around the center, some with their arms crossed and their faces stern, some leaning against walls, some stood side-by-side and whispering in private conversation. The man with the popped-up collar and the cigarette stood with his hands in his pockets and his eyes covered with blackened glasses.

John rolled his eyes. “Don’t be a bastard.” He said simply, tone back to its natural bored state. “Kid’s already an orphan, now he’s an only child too. Must hurt.”

“As if _you’d_ know,” cigarette-man spat back, and Arso absentmindedly recalled that he lived alone since the day their roles were given. “filthy fucking jai-“

“Now, that’s enough.” A woman with a kind face and neatly-tied hair said, eyes cold. “Shut up and stop your bickering, we’ve got a murder on our hands.”

“Murder? Who says it’s murder? The bitch probably just burnt herself on her straighteners,” the collar guy said again, growling.

“Straighteners don’t leave gasoline. And the worst of the burns were on her skin, not her hair.” The woman said simply. “Now, sir, if you’ve got nothing to do other than upset this poor boy, I’d suggest you retire for the night. In fact, I’d suggest we all do.”

As arso turned towards his door, he made a note of where the asshole went, making a mental note to give him a few words of his own.

_He's next._

* * *

 

The man in front of him looked _familiar,_ but not in the _seen-you-before_ way.

It felt like he knew him, from a distant memory, something near-unreachable. The man had clean brown hair, but his shirt and pants were clearly old and barely-worn, and the knife and bag in his fists hinted towards something less than nice. His face was hidden with an old mask, something cheap and Halloween-styled, cutesy and yet oddly terrifying in the pitch blackness, ending right before the tip of his nose.

The man paused, bit his lip, and flashed Arso a charming smile.

“Well, _this_ is awkward,” he said, in a very distinct voice with a very identifiable hint of nervousness. His smile looked strained, and Arso’s eyes flicked along his face dully before he returned a half-hearted grin.

“Yeah.” He said, quietly. He’d made a habit of being quiet now. He ran his soot-covered fingers through his filthy hair, and smeared some of the dirt on his forehead in the process. He’d made a point of dirtying up his normally-pristine appearance as much as possible before going out that night.

The man hesitated, fiddling with his knife, gingerly poking at the sharp edge, before lifting his hand, grinning wider this time. “I’d tell you my name, but I think he’s watching us,” he tilted his head to the security camera gently. “so you can call me SK. Short for “serial killer”, I guess.”

“Cool. Arsonist.” His voice sounded rougher now he spoke louder, painful with the lack of exercise. “Or Arso, or whatever.”

SK nodded, before glancing at the camera again, nervously. “Think you could burn the will?” He asked plainly. “He’s probably drawn us in it, or something sketchy like that. Get it? _Sketchy?”_

Arso couldn’t help but snort, before pulling out his matchbox, running his finger along the edge slowly. “Think so. Should be easy.”

_“Perfect!”_ SK clapped his hands together, straightening his mask. “Then I’ll go cut him up a little. Make him all good and dead, yeah? See you around, _Burny-Boy.”_

Arso only really comprehended what he’d said when he was already making his way up the stairs, knife in hand, whistling a tune. He growled.

“Hey, wait! I’m killing him! _And don't call me that!”_

“Too late, Burny-Boy~!” SK sang.

By the time Arso got to the top of the stairs, the cigarette guy was nothing but a corpse, and SK had left through the window, a trail of blood staining the carpet.

“God-damn asshole.” He muttered, before lifting the man’s quickly-scrawled will and lighting a match, holding them both dangerously close to his face and watching the ink burn.

His name turned to a puddle of black, the sketches of him and SK turned to nothing but ash, and Arso pinched the flames out right before they got to his role, leaving it on the corpse’s chest, smiling softly.

“Guess we blew you spy-high,” he laughed softly, before picking up his gasoline and climbing out the window.

He’d barely washed the soot off himself before he heard people screaming bloody murder.


End file.
